


A SUN TO RISE

by charbroiled



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Azure Moon Route, Blood and Injury, F/M, Hand Jobs, Hegemon Husk Edelgard, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Post-War, Sex, Teratophilia, ruler/retainer, survival in the face of defeat, the end of a crimson path, the fall of an empire, what is left but each other?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-18 21:35:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22000222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charbroiled/pseuds/charbroiled
Summary: "Your Majesty," he whispered. His hand was pressed into his side as though it alone would staunch the wound; an arrow had been snapped off in his collarbone and the arm below it moved in spasms if at all. Every breath was a pained hiss. His white gloves were soaked with blood as well; she doubted that all of it was his.She tried to speak, but her throat seized and she choked up blood. She swallowed, ignoring the lancing pain, and tried again, a hoarse choke through twisted mouth, through pointed teeth."Hubert. Did you come to die beside me?" How fitting.--To survive.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 17
Kudos: 111
Collections: Fire Emblem Three Houses Rarepair Port Secret Santa





	A SUN TO RISE

**Author's Note:**

  * For [7LittleNumbers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/7LittleNumbers/gifts).



> Secret Santa for 7LittleNumbers. It's an idea I've had for a long time, and I'm glad I could write it for you, 7! I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> I pretty much exclusively listened to [Krigsgaldr by Heilung](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7ZqZVunCb4) while writing this.

Enbarr burned. The city's ashen smoke, bitter on Edelgard's lips, made the blood on her tongue oily and sweet. Each breath was a new pain which shattered her world; she could not tell if her heart beat save for the bubbling of blood in her chest. Byleth had once told her they had no heartbeat. Then, she had thought it a joke. Now, she knew-- the human body could be contorted to strange visages so easily by strange hands. And it was exhilarating, to wear those shapes. Was this how they had always felt? An empty expression, an ashen demon, watching Enbarr burn, standing by her foolish stepbrother's side and watching her bleed out with blank eyes.

Fools deserved each other. They should have ensured that she was dead. She would have done that much for then.

Instead, they left her to bleed out and she laid on the grand floor of her imperial palace, vision hazy with smoke or tears, the painted arches wavering far above as her body knit and unknit itself with the dragon's blood.

Her body-- this husk, warped and opened, blackened like her city, teeth a halo behind her head-- refused to die, but she could not live with her sternum shattered. So she tried to let go of her thoughts, to force her breaths even, to ignore the splintering pain of bone in her lung.

So many people had died for her that there were not enough flowers to mark all of their graves; nor would her death mark an end to it. If only. A bloody path, and her blood at the end of it… but here she was at the end, alone, and her dear shadow was not beside her.

No, he had chosen to die on the street outside rather than to face her in the monstrous form she had allowed those who slither to twist her into. To say it was a taste more bitter than the ashes…

Halting steps faltered across the palace floor. Familiar-- no. She needed to see, but when she attempted to move, her body only responded with bursts of fresh pain. Someone touched her arm. She was sure she knew who, but--

She heard him before her vision cleared. Even blind, she would have known him. Perhaps being blind would have saved her from seeing his stricken expression, his bloodless face splattered with mottled crimson, black hair matted with blood, limp over one eye.

"Your Majesty," he whispered. His hand was pressed into his side as though it alone would staunch the wound; an arrow had been snapped off in his collarbone and the arm below it moved in spasms if at all. Every breath was a pained hiss. His white gloves were soaked with blood as well; she doubted that all of it was his.

She tried to speak, but her throat seized and she choked up blood. She swallowed, ignoring the lancing pain, and tried again, a hoarse choke through twisted mouth, through pointed teeth. 

"Hubert. Did you come to die beside me?"

_ How fitting. _

Hubert was already muttering under his breath-- words she recognized, though she had never learned them herself. Words of faith.

"Stop!"

Did she speak, or only make a sound of anguish? Either way he did not react save for his cool hands so gentle over the knotted, blackened and writhing wound of her ribcage..

"I saved these words for you." His voice was a breath; his bright eyes with pinpoint pupils fixed on her face, though she was not sure he could see her any longer; his hand rested on her cheek, warm and wet, and then he pitched forward across her.

The healing magic flowed through her, at first a cooling relief and then an icy pain as her body, the hegemon manipulation, the crests in her blood all twisted into their places. It felt as though her sternum cracked back into place, as though her skin became armor to hold her broken flesh inside. She sat upright with a shuddering gasp. The sounds of war still echoed from outside; strewn across the hall were hacked bodies, mostly Slither's soldiers and mages. No great loss. She wrapped her arms around Hubert's limp body, pressed her face against his back. She felt bloodless, dry, emptied.

He still breathed, but haltingly; his heartbeat was faint. At any moment one of the Faerghus soldiers would return, and then they would both be dead. It wasn't the thought of death that bothered her, but oddly, perhaps ironically, the idea of wasting the spell which Hubert had clutched so tightly to his chest for her. To die anyway, in the face of the effort he had destroyed himself for.

He could have healed himself. 

What time had he bought her, surrounded by enemies, in the death throes of her empire? He could have escaped, lived a life freed of-- as if she could afford sentimentality at this moment. 

Edelgard slid her arms, odd and black and bony, under his shoulders and knees. Closing her hands around him was a delicate ordeal using this body she had to learn anew for the second time. She didn't want to hurt him; who knew how sharp these talons were? They had cleaved through both armor and horseflesh surely enough, for all the good it had done her. That memory felt distant, glorious, her body a quivering weapon, a surrender to purpose, her blood and her self crackling with power--

Now, with Hubert's limp weight settled across her arms, she lurched to her feet, unbalanced, her armor knitted to her muscles. She was used to the clank of armor, but this, this was the click of bone or talons against the floor. A beast's noise.

But quieter than steel, at least. She had to rebalance before she could walk; Crest monster or not, Hubert was still tall and lanky and angling him so that she could both see and carry him was difficult. Every three halting steps on pointed feet she was sure he would slip from her grotesque claws to the floor, to join the other corpses.

Hubert's chest rose and fell so shallowly. Though the first rule of battlefield aid was to move the body of the injured as little as possible, she clutched him tighter against her, his head resting against the-- the  _ teeth _ of her shoulder as though he embraced her. As though he  _ kissed _ the warped flesh--

Tears burned in her crimson eyes.

An extensive network of cisterns and canals ran under the bones of Enbarr, ancient and-- officially-- unmapped. House Vestra had knowledge of the submerged labyrinth, of course, as did, or so she suspected, Those Who Slithered. Faerghus and their king of delusions wouldn't find them down here, but the Slither, if they thought she yet lived-- Edelgard doubted anyone would miss Hubert's corpse among so many, but hers, well. Likely to be significant.

Perhaps Dimitri would have returned to claim her head himself, or worse, perhaps even her body and its polluted blood would have been useful to the Slither in death. The thought made her shiver, and her fingers clench, and for a pit of a second she feared she had torn Hubert into shreds in her fury.

No, he yet breathed, and though her hands twitched she had not cut into his pallid flesh nor his blood-darkened uniform. Her shadow, a husk's shadow… had he always been so light?

Her entire body ached, but she pushed on, far past where she could smell the last lingering traces of smoke, out to the far edges of Enbarr. Her eyes were suited to this pitch-dark in a way that they had never been before, a small… to call it a blessing would be too kind. She would have to test the limits of this vision later. At the moment navigating the ghostly dark without the signal of a lantern at least made escape easier.

The limping click of her unfamiliar footsteps echoed far between the stone arches of the cistern. Her legs were seizing. More than once she stumbled and clutched Hubert to her, terrified that he would slip from her arms. Though he was unconscious it seemed he leaned into her, his arm twitching around her shoulders. Still alive. For how long would he endure?

She feared that simply knowing she still lived would be enough for him, and that he would slip away into darkness satisfied with his role well played. Where would she go? What life could be left for them? She wasn't even human--

\--though in the eyes of many, she had never been. A pawn, a sacrifice, a figurehead, a villain.

A survivor.

There. It fell into place. That was her role now. Simply to survive in the face of all that had been done to her. All that she had done. A lesser person might have termed it spite, but it was not spite. It was simply survival.

A second set of footsteps joined hers. Someone trying to be stealthy. They paused when Edelgard paused, struggled to match her staggered gait. If she had not been wounded, if her gait had been even, they could have escaped her notice. But now in the dark, wounded, she knew she was being followed.

A Faerghus soldier surely would have returned for reinforcements. An Adestrian had nothing to fear from her.

That left the Slither.

To kill her? To recruit her? A survivor in their own right?

Did it truly matter? She was forced to walk with her back to them, as if ignorant of their approach. And the footsteps drew nearer…

She needed to find a place to hide Hubert, so that she could face them properly. She couldn't fight with her minister in her arms. Dark magic blistered through her tendons to the skittering beat of her mounting anxiety. If only Hubert were awake! He, at least, was used to wielding these dreadful energies. She had always favored the refreshing simplicity of an axe. But Hubert had refused to face her in this form, had prepared for the siege outside the palace walls, and her lessons had come hastily from the odious Slither warlock Myson.

The lessons had sufficed. Even if she had taken to the art more naturally, her own body would never have been enough to win the war.

The boot-steps behind her quickened, and she heard a sharp inhale, a hissed voice with the old, odd accent so common among the Slither. Almost mocking. A voice she didn't recognize, save the accent. Some soldier-- she'd seen Myson die.

"Your Majesty--"

With no space for doubt between feeling and action she shifted Hubert's weight across her chest and whirled, the violent power crackling out from her ebon claws as a lance. The man did not have time to suck in his breath for a scream.

He died in silence save for the sizzle of flesh and snap of his bones.

Almost as satisfying as an axe strike. Edelgard hobbled over, kneeled in front of the steaming corpse, her tail and the... flesh around her torso twitching with cramps. She tried not to think about it. She had tried not to look at herself, her reflection in the tall windows and polished marble of the palace. Tried not to think about Hubert bowing and saying in his soft voice that he could not advise her to follow this course of action. That he was needed elsewhere.

Edelgard braced Hubert's back against her forearm. She couldn't set him down. She was too tired; she couldn't lose him, couldn't rest against him, though she wanted nothing more than that. To rest together in their shared grave.

But he still breathed; his shallow breath tickled the bloom of teeth at her collar.

She fumbled with the man's corpse, hunting in his robes for hope against hope, some vulnerary or elixir. Ah, glass clicked against her claws. Retrieving it with her misshapen hands was a clumsy process, and finally in frustration she ripped the robes and snapped the pouch-belt, but the vial was hers. She pinched its neck between her fingers to lift to her face. Cork-stoppered and half-drunk-- perhaps this mage had been injured in the fight-- but the glint of blue she could make out in the violet glow of the dead man's burning flesh reassured her that it was a vulnerary, at least, and not some useless antivenin or waking agent or whatever else the Slither cared to carry with them to battle. Vodka. Who knew.

If one man could find them here, many could. The smell of the corpse would give them away; dumping it in the water would simply poison some in Enbarr. If only rot could be directed solely to Faerghus…

Enough. She needed to keep moving.

Whether she walked for minutes or hours Edelgard had no way of knowing. Only Hubert's faltering heartbeat kept her time until she found a sufficient nook along one of the further canals to hide in, one that sheltered both him and her entire body. She had to curl up to fit, tucking her legs under herself and resting Hubert's head on her lap.

He was sickly pale, his eyes hooded. When she shifted his eyes half-opened to an unfocused gaze, the yellow jaundiced against the bruises of his skin. How long had he been awake?

"Hubert," she whispered, half in horror, half from relief.

His expression curled into a half-smile, bitter and distant. He didn't speak, but his hand, cold, curled against her wrist while she blundered with digging the cork from the vial. If she had faith, surely this would be the time to pray. But neither man nor Goddess had ever come to her aid.

None but Hubert.

She lifted the glass to his lips and watched the liquid pool at the corners of his mouth and run down his neck. No, no, no. Not truly awake, then; just a reflexive smile at the sound of her voice. Her heart twisted in her chest. The thought of him drifting in some pain-fever was too cruel to bear. There was a way to make a sick person drink, what was it? Quickly!

She tipped his head back, fingers first pressing between his jaws to open his mouth, then gently stroking his throat until it bobbed in a swallow. Edelgard let the empty vulnerary drop from her claws to bounce on the floor and slumped back, against the bricks.

There. She had done everything she could do. She exhaled. Just as she settled back to wait, or perhaps try to coax her aching self to sleep, Hubert's body seized; he rolled over, his shoulder hitting the far wall, and coughed and sputtered. She slipped her hands around his chest, to pull him back upright, and he jerked away, his elbow hitting her arm with enough intention to sting.

What did she do? She'd never been one to offer comfort. Words had always seemed fruitless. The corners of her eyes burned again, and she pushed away from him, back towards the wall. What could she say?

His hand was at his throat as his breathing evened.

"Forgive me, Your Majesty," he whispered.

What an absurd sentiment to hold at this time. She almost wanted to laugh. Instead she released the breath she did not know that she had been holding, and reached out to him with her curving talons, unsure of what of her he could see. He did not flinch when she touched him, though she saw his eyes flick down to her claws, then fall on her face only to quickly avert to the wall.

"...your eyes glow," he mumbled. An uncharacteristically insipid observation from him; something she might have expected from, well, Caspar, the traitor. Under other circumstances it would have been funny.

"Yes," she agreed, and curled her claws against her chest. There was no point in apologizing. What was done was done.

The silence was excruciating. Every breath of Hubert's, each rustle of his clothes as he uneasily shifted, may as well have been thunder. She waited as he waited, and as he ran his hands down his torso and winced, and as he then began to peel off the blood-soaked cape and jacket.

"Let me see," she said, quietly. Her voice echoed, a rumble despite her efforts. 

He hesitated-- it hurt, that hesitation-- then bowed his head.

"As you wish," he murmured.

The shirt came off easily, the undershirt less so, matted to his thin chest with blood. She shifted to let him sit with his back against her, ran her knuckles over the contours of his torso, gently, searching for wounds. The broken shaft of an arrow still protruded from his shoulder, though the vulnerary seemed to have knit the bone; his hand flexed, easily. Too dangerous to remove the arrow now. They'd have to cut it down later, then dig the head out to let the flesh re-heal. Not the first such wound either of them had suffered. The other wounds weren't as bad as she had feared; a few ribs that shifted under her touch, bruises and cuts closed by the vulnerary's solution.

Nor was she inobservant to the way her touch quickened his breath and tightened his chest. Ah, they'd both known, but never…

...under other circumstances, perhaps, and surely not with this monstrous form…

"Your Majesty…"

"My empire is overthrown."

Silence, then a murmured, "my lady," tinged with disapproval.

If only he would say her name.

She waited for him to speak again, her hands tucked against her legs. It took… more than the space of several breaths for him to settle on words.

"...should you wish, you do not need to cease touching me."

"Your wounds aren't as dire as I feared," Edelgard said, gently. 

He turned his head to rest on her chest, his hair tickling her shoulder. Were his cheeks flushed, or was that simply the heat of him against her?

"My apologies. It is enough to know the regard you hold me in. To carry me with your own arms, I..."

Enough? 

\--oh. Now her cheeks burned, or so it felt, perhaps under the black scales.

"Is…" her voice caught in her throat. "Is this shape not abhorrent to you?"

"...it cannot be, my lady, because it is yours."

"But you would not face me, I had thought…"

"Your choice." His voice was an exhalation that teased her hair. "It was your surrender I could not face. To submit yourself to Those Who Slither In the Dark again, for a sliver of a chance of victory. It is your path. I merely walk alongside. But you yourself, my lady, and your body, no matter how it may be marked, I will never find repulsive. Your path… you… ah."

For a moment she worried he struggled with pain, not with words.

"...no matter the path,  _ you _ are who I love."

Words he had spoken before, and she had thought, then, in jest. More difficult to dismiss now, huddled in the dark, alone, together, both of them bearing the indelible scars of failure. As in the beginning, when it had been only them together, when he had seen her with the color stolen from her hair and eyes…

Perhaps she had been the fool, to think he would be frightened of a second change.

She trailed her claws along his chest, careful not to scrape or nick his already-tender flesh, and marveled at how he shivered and leaned against her. This form was not so different from when she had been human, it seemed; at least not in the respect of how it felt to respond to the feeling of another body tensing against her.

She shifted her weight, moving him to sit propped against her, more tightly. Odd, to be taller than him, his head fitting neatly under her chin. Being tall, at least, seemed like a trait she could get used to. He pulled his gloves off one at a time while she pushed him closer against her, against the stir between her hips that made her tail twitch-- her wings-- how odd-- an inappropriate feeling that tightened through her, for-- no, enough. She was no longer Emperor. The war was over. She wanted to be close to him, and he to her. That was what was left. That was enough.

He reached up and laced his hands behind her neck, arching up against her to bare his torso, his fingers brushing the … what could she call it? A flower of teeth? A halo-- They convulsed, squeezed his arms, shivering with the touch, and he made a startled-- but not displeased-- noise. He tilted his head back to gazing up at her, pupils dilated until his eyes were black, his skin tinged pink in the soft glow of her eyes, his lips parted just slightly, looking at her with such  _ need _ \-- oh, the sight made her weak. His hair fell limp across his eye and she resisted the urge to tuck it behind his ear. He had always been a bony person, all angles, and she had always found herself soft in comparison, but now she was the black shadow, spines and muscle, and he the pale light…

She cupped his groin with her palm, her fingers sliding between his thighs, and he squeezed her fingers with his legs. Ah, he was hard, pressing against the muscles of her hand-- certainly she had been intimate before, but-- this time, the feeling prickled through her in a way it never had, a crimson feeling that throbbed through her--

She unfurled the wings to restrict his waist against her, her tail she curled around his legs, stroking his hands and wrists with the halo of teeth and her hands gently, gently working along his torso and his hips while her long white hair draped over his chest. Even when her claws brushed the edge of his wounds rather than his cock or nipples he gasped and ground against her, whispering my lady-- there-- to be enfolded in you--

She kissed the top of his head when he squeezed his eyes shut, her fangs in his curls, pressed harder against him, pulled him so close he could barely move, barely breathe, until a last breathless shudder wracked him-- ah-- a choked cry from his throat, not of pain but release--

_ "--Edelgard--!" _

He relaxed against her, his eyes still closed, mouth still parted, sheened with sweat, his legs unclenching, his hands slipping back from her shoulders to lace into her fingers. Arousal still coiled deep within her hips, but she had no idea how to satisfy that feeling in this form. Nor did it matter, Hubert nestled in her arms was pleasure enough. Comfort enough. Perhaps they could figure out an answer to that question later, if they survived much longer.

Later.

Odd to think of there being a later. But there would be a later, so long as they were together. That it was him who walked the path with her… and they had walked together, to the conclusion of the path, to the midnight cliff she had expected their bodies to dash upon the rocks below. They had not died. The crimson path they cut had ended, and the night of the Empire had ended, and the sun would rise on the kingdom of a fool.

Edelgard would not stay to see what became of this kingdom. But with Hubert at her side she would endure. Though they would have to keep to the shadows and the wild places... perhaps there was some way they could begin to heal, if not Fodlán, then, perhaps, each other.


End file.
